My home away from home

HP-41C calculator

Unlike the TI-58, the HP-41C had persistant memory and could display alphanumeric characters. This opened a wealth of opportunities for new applications. I used to get programs written for my calculator, mainly games, from printed magazines. This may sound weird now, but at the time there were many magazines that published applications for popular devices.

L'ordinateur de Poche

In France, the most popular magazine for calculators and portable computers was called L'Ordinateur de Poche. Ever since I discovered this publication, my secret goal was to publish an article of my own. After writing many small games, I finally wrote an agenda application that I thought was worth being published and submitted it. It took them more than a year to publish it, and when I finally received the issue with my article and a small check (my first income from programming) I had already moved to a new computing platform, the Apple II.